An autonomous vehicle is one which is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without the use of human input. It is envisioned that such vehicles will be capable of transitioning from an autonomous driving mode and a manual driving mode, in which a driver manually operates the vehicle. It is further envisioned that such autonomous driving may only be allowed on preapproved or certified roads or zones.
It should be appreciated that the functionality of a vehicle will differ during an autonomous driving mode and a manual driving mode. Furthermore, during the different driving modes of a vehicle, different safety precautions will be needed. In particular, during an autonomous driving mode, precautions are needed in order to prevent an inadvertent driving input to affect the autonomous driving. For example, a driver of a vehicle may accidently engage the steering wheel or the foot pedals during the autonomous driving mode. To account for this problem, many car manufactures disengage the steering wheel and foot pedals such that if an inadvertent driving input were to be applied, the input would have no effect during the autonomous driving mode.